In today's work environment, mobile connectivity is becoming increasingly important. The ability to send and receive data anywhere within an office, school, factory or other location is quickly becoming a necessity, and wireless local area networks have been introduced to facilitate such mobile connectivity. Generally, a wireless local area network access points (AP) are directly connected to wired networks, such as an Ethernet network. In this approach, the maintenance of configuration data, the client authentication, and other tasks are conducted on the access point. However, this approach has numerous deficiencies and drawbacks, among others elevated network management and maintenance costs.
To alleviate some of these deficiencies and drawbacks, intelligent wireless networks have been developed. In this type of wireless network, the access ports are coupled to a wireless switch that contains the intelligence elements to maintain configuration data, perform client authentication, and perform other tasks while the access ports provide only wireless access. This configuration presents numerous benefits, among others ease of management, and cost efficiency and flexibility.
Regardless of the wireless network configuration, adequate wireless coverage for a given area is typically confirmed during installation. The confirmation of adequate coverage generally involves a survey of the area that the wireless network is designed to support. However, these surveys can be costly and time consuming. Additionally, the surveys can be inaccurate, leading to areas of poor or no coverage.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a wireless network system with wireless access ports that substantially eliminate or totally eliminate the need for a prior installation survey. Furthermore, other desirable factors and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the for given technical field and background.